


Coming up spades and splinters

by muzzlemess (rustywrites)



Series: everybody's headed for the pass again [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Developing Relationship, Experimental Style, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Intimacy, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Linear Narrative, Sexual Content, dealing with metaphysical and existential fallout, finding happiness where you least expect it, the inherent eroticism of monsterfucking, with all the grace of a boy who's favorite pastime is burning cursed books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26826268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustywrites/pseuds/muzzlemess
Summary: "Will you tell me? Not now, but -- I don't know, someday. Do you think you will?""I--" a long pause, a ripple, a radio in between stations, "I don't know. I'm not sure I can.""Hm." A hum, a nod, hands carding through hair that isn't hair, "well, that's alright. I guess 'someday' and 'never' are functionally just two different ways to say the same thing, huh?""Now you're getting it," a kiss that tastes like 36-hours without sleep and the sound of neon lights turning on.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Series: everybody's headed for the pass again [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956493
Comments: 2
Kudos: 99





	Coming up spades and splinters

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, friends. This is very much an epilogue for **[I think we'd survive in the wild](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26745841)** , but if you don't mind contextual spoilers for that story it can probably stand on its own. Maybe. I'm not a great judge of that and I can't tell you what to do so you gotta make your own choices there, sorry to say.
> 
> The "M" here is for sexual situations, specifically sexual situations between a monster and a human. It's nothing too graphic -- but it is very weird both in terms of the actual content and some of the themes it runs into so I guess consider that your content warning. Same as usual, I don't think it's anything too non sequitur or unexpected for a regular TMA episode, but if there are tags you'd like me to toss on, just let me know! 
> 
> **Title is from Buddy Wakefield's "[Horsehead.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUAmj24ffGQ)"**

_"If every single one of our bodies got amputated, right now,  
We'd still have to deal with what's left of us."  
**Buddy Wakefield, A Choir of Honest Killers**_

* * *

As it turned out, life in the world as a very much alive ghost had its ups and downs. In the days following the ritual and its subsequent collapse, Gerry felt like he just kept finding out new and absolutely bizarre things about his new lot in life. They weren't necessarily bad -- at least, most of them weren't -- but they all took some genuine getting used to.

You just don't think about how many things in day to day life require you to exist until you don't anymore.

Money, for instance. Gerry, having been raised the way he had, always kept a healthy store of cash on him, which came in handy more often than not but was basically a necessity now. None of his credit cards worked, having all simultaneously have their records scrambled or deleted. Don't get him wrong, instantaneously being out of debt was a fantastic feeling, but more and more everyday things wanted plastic over cash. He also no longer had a bank account, which -- alright, that one hurt a little more than he'd like to admit. He'd never amassed a massive savings or anything but it sucked to see your money just disappear in a series of what really amounted to extra-dimensionally provoked clerical errors.

Thankfully, the handful of forged documents -- his fake passport chief among them, the one he'd used to make sure he couldn't be traced while hopping around the globe with Gertrude -- had managed to stick around. He wasn't quite sure how well they'd hold up to scrutiny beyond a half-hearted glance at the TSA, but he figured that would soon become something he needed to stress test, at least if he ever wanted to start a new account somewhere.

His flat, too, had been a whole can of worms. No more lease. Even the mail that his landlady had so frequently left in neat little bundles on his door mat could no longer prove that anyone named Gerard Keay had ever lived in this building. His name had been replaced by "current resident" on every single one. Bye bye, renter's history.

It had taken a very long and very awkward conversation with his landlady to fix that particular issue. It didn't start well. He'd forgotten, in the moment, and called her by name before she had a chance to extend a hand and offer an introduction. Spooked her right quick, that did, and forced him to come up with a bunch of incredibly silly and convoluted lies, referencing friends that didn't exist and adds he _swore_ he remembered seeing that she'd never placed.

In the end, he basically bribed her. Almost twice what his monthly rent had been, in cash, up front, just to let him stay -- er, _move in_ \-- through the end of the year.

At least he didn't lose any of his furniture.

* * *

"You didn't know it would work, did you?" Incredulous, teasing.

"Not at all," a touch too strange to really be called gentle, a smile ought to be cruel but isn't, "I was an uncalculated risk -- the best kind, I'd say."

"Mm. I suppose I can't argue that one.".

* * *

His clothes were another story. Most of them, anyway. He didn't pretend to know exactly what the Fractal Vase and Michael had _actually_ done to him, but if he had to guess, it seemed like it removed all the personal stuff from the equation that was the real world. The things that people could identify you with. Things like tables and chairs, the anonymous stuff, all stayed in one place. But things like customized pieces or well-loved outfits, shoes that had molded themselves to your feet over years of wear? Gone. If there was too much _you_ stuck to the seams of whatever it was, it blipped out of the world too. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't a huge deal but it did hurt a little. He _liked_ some of his clothes, and some of the pieces were impossible to find again now.

Thankfully it was not hard to find things in black for cheap. And all the clothes he'd been wearing that day, which included the vast majority of his jewelry -- the studs in his ears, nose, and lips, the soft black leather band around his neck, the handful of rings and bracelets -- had all stayed on him. One less tedious thing to deal with.

* * *

"What about the shop? And uh -- my mom? Did this work on ghosts?" A question more dragged out, messy, than asked.

"I don't know that either. I don't think there's any rush to find out."

"You're right." Not yet, not yet.

* * *

For several days after the incident, when Gerry was still very much trying to get a solid image in his head of what had happened at all, much less how it all went down, he'd spent basically all of his time just holed up in his flat, processing. His internet had been canceled along with everything else so he was limited to sitting with pen-and-paper notebooks, jotting things down, scraping through whatever casefiles and statements he'd happen to have laying around and making some notes. He still had some of his stolen statements and miscellaneous Institute paraphernalia lying around. Very distantly and without much real concern, he wondered what it looked like on their side of things. He imaged his requisition forms and paperwork were all blank now.

Oh well, it wasn't like they weren't used to dealing with spooky and weird stuff on the daily. If they even noticed at all, it would likely end up some poor intern's job to sort out and forget.

Still, he liked to theorize on it, if only in the abstract. It wasn't that he was a very analytical guy or anything, at least not by nature, but you don't survive something like this without wanting to try and connect some dots -- especially when Michael had hesitantly admitted that even _he_ didn't really even know what Gerry should expect from here on out.

It was unfamiliar territory for both of them.

Gerry didn't really mind, though. Truth be told, it was kind of thrilling. There was a giddiness in him now, a sort of lightness that seemed to touch every part of him, from the tips of his ears to his toes. He'd never felt so untethered before and, yeah, it was kind of scary, and sure, the real scope and scale of the consequences weren't totally visible to him yet and maybe they never would be, but.

He liked it.

He couldn't help feeling like he'd gained more than he lost.

* * *

"I can still feel The Eye in the back of my head, like it's searching for a signal or something," quiet, like a secret.

"It will find one in you, eventually, I'm sure. Nothing stays hidden forever," not grim, but definite.

"What happens then?"

"I suppose it will be a surprise for both of us."

* * *

Honestly, the fact that _Michael_ was the one to come out of this as Gerry's only legitimate tether to his old life had to be some sort of world record for irony. But in some other way, it was also weirdly perfect. If ever there were a creature in the world equipped to just take a situation that was this particular brand of fucked up directly in stride -- to have a really good time with it, even -- it had to be him.

And speaking _of --_

It appeared he was slowly building up a, ah, _tolerance_ for whatever vaguely hallucinogenic effects touching Michael seemed to have.

Which was its own special kind of convenient.

That first night -- or rather the first day, since he'd spent most of that first night in and out of consciousness as his body struggled to recover from being very nearly sacrificed to an extra-dimensional fear entity and then ripped out of reality and put back again -- he actually felt a little worried about it. Not that he minded the very literal and non-metaphorical intoxicated feeling that came with kissing Michael, per se, but it wasn't exactly ideal to immediately feel black-out cross-faded before things could even get going.

Which they were.

Going, that is.

* * *

"I still think you're foolish for trusting me."

"Who said anything about trusting you?" A teasing sound, bright and wild; punchdrunk.

"Liar," ozone and copper, the feeling of freefall, demanding kisses, too many, not enough, teeth that are not teeth.

"Just following your lead."

* * *

It was maybe a little ridiculous, actually. All told, the span of he and Michael's friendship stretched less than a year, and the majority of which had been defined almost entirely by a very healthy sense of caution and barely restrained sense of mortal peril. But now -- after everything -- it felt a bit like someone had released the safety break.

Michael had returned after Gerry had knocked on his door and immediately crowded him up against it with too sharp hands and too long legs and after about a minute Gerry felt so high he swore he could taste colors. Michael had laughed and laughed, not unkindly to be sure, but still Gerry's nose had started to bleed again and, well.

It was all a bit of a mess.

He'd ended up sprawled back on the couch with his head in Michael's lap, glassy eyed and dopey while Michael ran his fingers through his hair, twirling it around and around into little knots that Gerry would struggle to brush out later. At least his head and his cramped neck had stopped hurting. Everything had stopped hurting, really. Also the ceiling had melted like a lava lamp and Gerry couldn't remember his own birthday or that his tattoos _weren't_ supposed to be blinking at him. It was a little anxiety provoking, he could admit, but nowhere near as delirious or nightmarish as some of the statements he'd read where people had come into parts of The Spiral that were less, uh, friendly.

God, what a weird thing to say. What a weird thing to _be_.

He loved it.

In total, he was out for probably an hour or so. But it got less intense the next time around, and then less intense after that. Michael seemed honestly surprised to learn that he _could_ throttle back on his own psychotropic effects, which wasn't exactly comforting but Gerry doesn't hold it against him.

Everything between them has amounted to a very bizarre game of trial and error and that was fine, even though Gerry still tries not to think about the fact that, in an absolute worst case scenario, error could mean his grisly death. So far his luck has held out so why should it stop now, right?

It's actually cute, too, because sometimes Michael gets kind of shy about it. It kind of makes sense. Gerry still hasn't really had a chance to even take a passing glance at any of information he'd uncovered about Michael Shelley since everything went down, and he definitely hasn't brought it up again, but he can tell -- or, at least, he can _intuit_ that whatever Michael is now was new to him thanks to whatever had happened to Shelley. One day, he wants to get around to actually having that discussion, but it can wait.

* * *

"It...hurts, sometimes, the way you look at me and know. Or want to know. I can feel it, when you do," a confession, hesitation, a voice from nowhere in the dark.

"Can you?" There's no one in the room.

"Mm. But I -- don't want you to stop, though, even when it does."

* * *

For now, he's more than happy to watch an ancient, eldritch fear monster learn new things about itself in real time. Gerry also tries not to think about what it means that he's very readily started thinking of something as dangerous and, objectively, terrifying as 'cute' with such casual ease. Though that's perhaps less due to any self preservation instinct or intrinsic sense of caution and more because Gerry honestly can't remember a time he's casually thought of anything other than funny animals on the internet and some assorted cartoon characters as 'cute' and earnestly meant it.

Obviously, Michael isn't the only one learning new things about himself through all of this.

Both by nature and necessity, Gerry had always spent the bulk of his time alone. It was actually kind of a miracle that he'd never been approached by or at least partially consumed by The Lonely. But then again the Lukas family seemed to have a bit of a monopoly on that front so maybe it wasn't a miracle at all. Gerry may have been a candidate for The One Alone but he was the furthest thing from a candidate for the Lukas' exclusive club.

That, and had always been pretty good at spotting the warning signs of an impromptu Lonely attack well before they came on so it probably just never bothered. Or some combination of the two. Gerry really didn't know if that made complete sense or not, but it was fine -- a good thing, really, because he wasn't actually sure who his anchor would have been if he were to have suddenly found himself lost in an endless fog or crushed by faceless strangers or whatever insidious bullshit it liked to pull these days.

Certainly not his mom, definitely not Gertrude.

He knows who it would be now, though.

Just thinking that makes the tips of his ears heat up.

Christ, he's becoming a sap.

* * *

"Will you tell me? Not now, but -- I don't know, someday. Do you think you will?"

"I--" a long pause, a ripple, a radio in between stations, "I don't know. I'm not sure I can."

"Hm." A hum, a nod, hands carding through hair that isn't hair, "well, that's alright. I guess 'someday' and 'never' are functionally just two different ways to say the same thing, huh?"

"Now you're getting it," a kiss that tastes like 36-hours without sleep and the sound of neon lights turning on.

* * *

The point was, he wasn't used to -- dating? It felt reductive to call whatever this was between him and Michael 'dating' but it was also just the least headache-inducing way to go about it. Having another person, or not-exactly-person as the case may be, around and -- y'know, in contact with him, touching him, so frequently took some getting used to.

And Michael really liked to touch.

That one Gerry had not seen coming, to be honest. He'd sort of assumed that Michael didn't experience physical sensation the ways a human might, given how his body was more like a loose suggestion of one rather than anything completely corporeal. But even if that _was_ true, Michael still seemed to think that being allowed to put his hands on things was one of the most decadent things in the world. It was a little intimidating, given how lethal they could be, but they'd managed to avoid any major accidents with stabbing, slicing, or otherwise eviscerating so far, so. As far as Gerry was concerned, Michael could touch all he liked.

Like now, for instance.

Michael is all hunger and impossible bends in the light as he pins Gerry down to the unmade bed, towering and undeniably solid despite the fact that the way he takes up space at all is all wrong. It's not even odd to him anymore -- Michael's mostly human form was always tall and gawky but, when he wanted it to be, the illusion could be almost imperceptible to the untrained eye, or anyone not paying a great deal of attention. When he was trying less hard to blend in, though -- Gerry can admit that it did used to scare him. It doesn't anymore. The fact that he's pretty sure he could reach up to grab Michael's shoulders now and have his hands hit nothing at all, maybe come into contact with something solid ten centimeters or so down and to the left of where his mind is telling him a body ought to be -- it should be disorienting but instead, but it just feels exhilarating. Like the swoop in your stomach when you miscalculate where the last step on a flight of stairs is.

Gerry takes a breath through his nose and lets his head sink back into the pillow as Michael looms over him, eyes practically glowing, glassy like tv screens, in the low light as he grins and shifts and coils his fingers around Gerry's wrists above his head. Gerry's back bows up off the mattress when he finally closes his eyes and just lets himself feel. Michael's teeth could probably still draw blood, blunt as they are now, against the column of his neck. There'll be a bruise there, tomorrow, but it may not look like one.

* * *

"Oh," stars behind eyelids, cotton balls jammed into ears.

_Oh._

* * *

Gerry's skin does interesting things where Michael is involved. Like his blood doesn't know what to do anymore than his eyes do sometimes. The first time he'd seen one of the corkscrew marks twisting across his collarbone he'd had a momentary panic, his brain trained for so long to look at any unidentifiable discolorations on a person as potential signs of something awful. Then Michael had laughed and shown him in real time just how easy it was for him to decorate Gerry's body.

Being marked so many times had been what had gotten Gerry into this mess in the first place, he knows, but he doesn't mind so much now.

It was a good thing he had no one to explain himself to, because it probably would have been difficult to come up with a good reason why and how his neck had been covered in a haphazard collection of spiral-shaped hickies. Even Gerry's tattoos weren't immune -- the one that sat close to the top of his breastbone in the center of his chest, specifically, seemed to be a fixation point for Michael and the attention had, somehow, left it decidedly less human looking, black ink iris twisting in on itself. That one didn't fade back to normal like the bruises did, like the ink itself had been subject to whatever force Michael had been exerting.

For his part, Gerry tried to give as good as he got -- though that was a little complicated, too. Michael's skin, for all it was able to look human in the right light and the right context, didn't really behave the way a human's would -- and for as tactile as he was, being touched back in a traditional way didn't really do much for him. Actually maybe that's why he was so tactile in the first place -- some sort of vicarious thrill.

Instead, however strange it may have been, Michael seemed to react strongest when Gerry just _thought_ about touching him, or thought about how he couldn't touch him, or whatever impossibility lied inbetween. Michael swore up and down that he couldn't, in point of fact, actually read anyone's mind, but he could feel it when anyone focused their attention on him like that, let their minds flip over in his presence; surrendered to the complete lack of understanding.

It wasn't that hard, once Gerry got used to it. He was a quick study -- always had been. So as Michael pins him down, working his marks into his skin, Gerry lets his closed eyes start to roll back as he sinks into the feeling of it all -- everywhere and all at once -- just to hear Michael groan in return, a sound that hits him in waves, ringing in his ears. He imagines himself in that black nothing space he woke up in, surrounded by colors that couldn't be there, Michael's voice like it's a physical thing, the way his entire being seems as much defined by the negative space around it -- and it's nonsense, it's completely impossible, incongruous, but it's _good_ it's --

* * *

"Fuck. _Fuck_ \-- Micha-el--" tripping over something that isn't there, being jolted awake from a nightmare, falling over dizzy after spinning in circles.

"Oh, look at you."

* * *

Gerry has stopped feeling self conscious about the fact that, despite how high his tolerance might otherwise be to the proverbial splash-damage of Michael's general presence, sex with him will always leave him feeling just this side of completely obliterated. There are probably people all over the world who chase this sort of feeling by any means necessary, whips and chains and the like. Gerry doesn't judge -- really he wishes that everyone out there who's ever wanted it could have access to their very own fear-based demi-god because, honestly, it's probably a lot less work than the alternative.

Er -- maybe not, actually, considering fear-based demi-gods usually come with a side order of gruesome death.

That's the furthest thing from his mind as he lays here, though, blissed out and far away from his body, floating and falling in kind.

Eventually he'll scrape himself up and stretch, crack every joint in his body, and take a shower, partially to clean up the mess he'd made of himself, partially to help shock his mind back into his body. Michael will tease him about it, put on a show of 'changing' his outfit between one breath and the next, fixing his hair without moving. Gerry will roll his eyes and flip him off and Michael will laugh from somewhere else in the room entirely.

Even with all the bridges left to cross -- or burn as the case may be -- Gerry can't help but feel a warm little prickle of joy in his stomach. Who could have ever guessed. Life is so funny. The world is so strange.

Michael doesn't need to sleep -- he probably couldn't, really, not that Gerry had ever asked. Sometimes, though, Gerry will fall asleep with the feeling of a solid weight pressed up against him, the sound of breathing -- or something vaguely approximate to breathing -- in his ear. It was most likely all in his head, but he doesn't mind. He appreciates the illusion, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much again for taking the time to read! Playing around in this silly little AU has been a ton of fun.


End file.
